Bricolage: A Womans Use of Canonical Ideology :: Canonical Ideology Literature

Bricolage: A Woman's Use of Canonical Ideology le bricolage: travail dont la technique est improvisà ©e, adaptà ©e aux materiaux, aux circonstances.[1] In chapter one of The Savage Mind, Claude Levà ­-Strauss explains bricolage as a way of understanding the structure of mythical thought in "savage" societies. The term bricoleur can be used practically, to represent a kind of craftsman though Levà ­-Strauss brings the word to an analytical level, and it is with this level that we are concerned. The bricoleur's "universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always to do with `whatever is at hand'"[2] so, as a craftsman, he is conservative and ecological. He works from within a structure in order to build out of it: "the materials of the bricoleur are elements which can be defined by two criteria: they have had a use.... and they can be used again either for the same purpose or for a different one if they are at all diverted from their previous function."[3] For more information on this chapter, "The Science of the Concrete", click here. In this paper, I will examine this concept as it applies to certain patterns an d ideas that exist in canonical American ideology and literature in the nineteenth century and how its double nature presents an opportunity for those "marginal" or "other" Americans. In examining this, the American writer will be considered a sort of craftsman. The concept of bricolage resonates strongly in the American literary tradition that is constructed alongside the nation itself. T.S. Eliot and Octavio Paz both support its prevalence in the tradition. They conceive of the literary canon as an ivory tower, "a closed edifice... that cracks open to allow entrance only to the work of genius - by implication, to a gifted man."[4] As Eliot perceives this monument as necessarily alterable, one which allows a new work to enter upon it if "the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted,"[5] Paz presents a similar, though significantly radicalized view of the "constant revolt" of tradition" rather than its "continuity."[6] Paz's "tradition against itself" extends Eliot's with the notion that "what constitutes the modern tradition is the constant renewal of literary forms, as contemporary textual practices."[7] However divergent, both of these theories rely on a similar concept which shapes an American li terary tradition according to Levà ­-Strauss' bricolage: "in order to belong to tradition...